Blackwell Reference Online

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Feminist philosophy is a body of scholarship which began in the early 1970s as one branch of the women's studies movement. Like women's studies in other disciplines, feminist philosophy started out with the somewhat modest goal of ending the invisibility of women in much disciplinary knowledge. Twenty years ago few would have predicted that this project of greater inclusion for women and women's experience in philosophical inquiry would produce the huge body of work partially documented in this volume, much of which has challenged and helped transform basic philosophical paradigms in many subfields. Begun with the intention of using existing philosophical tools and techniques to address issues of special concern to women, primarily issues of practical ethics and politics, feminist philosophy has moved to investigating the overt and covert ways in which the devaluation of women may be inherent in the most enduring ideals, the central concepts, and the dominant theories of philosophy. Feminist philosophy is thus defined by its commitment to redressing perceived male bias in philosophy. This commitment has appeared in a variety of ways. Feminist philosophy includes projects to recuperate the work of forgotten women philosophers excluded from the canon. It also includes direct challenges to the disparagement of women explicit in the work of many canonical philosophers; in the Western ... log in or subscribe to read full text